Got an offer, what is the minimum salary increase I should consider for moving?

As mentioned in another thread, I got no raise or bonus this year, and with some org changes happening, I have been looking around. So i thought this would be a good opportunity for me to get somewhat of a fresh start, something outside of NY and finance - long story short, I got an offer from a position in the San Francisco area, a place where I always wanted to live and experience. issue is, while the position was advertising up to 42% more than my current salary, their best initial offer was only 10% more. while I wasn't expecting *though I was hoping* a 42% increase, I was expecting to land somewhere in-between, and maybe closer to the high end.

I told the hiring manager that I based on my experience, track record and what I could offer the position I was wanted something more competitive, and while I was neither rejecting nor accepting the offer, I would review the complete benefits package while she gets back to me with a better offer.

Logistics of moving to the other side of the country aside, with respect to salary, what sort of increase should I expect or hope for or am I being unreasonable? I think one problem is that their offer was probably based on my current salary and the fact that I got no bonus and raise this year hurt me.

Assume everyone will have a different answer here. Personally I wouldn't jump ship for less than +20%, and I certainly wouldn't move for anything less either - and they'd better pay relo too. Now that I'm married, a move might require upwards of a 50% bump to get my wife onboard with the idea.

Also I believe SF costs are at parity with NY so you don't have to take cost of living into account. I guess that's a good thing, makes weighing options easier.

The job you found allows you to move into a geography that you would prefer.

It pays 10% more in actual dollars.

It's for a sector that can pay well, but doesn't have a lot of institutional *flexibility* in pay scales per se. (Unless you're a coach or nobel laureate.) They may have literally no choice but to base their offer on your pay or have to go fight through MULTIPLE levels of red tape and managers to get an exception.

Honestly, look long and hard at relative CoL, including any adjustments that you plan on making. If you can afford to live where you want in comparable housing, with a comparable quality of life, *and* they're paying your way over there, anything more than a 0% raise is bonus. You're getting lots of non-salary benefits, many of which you may not realize until you're in the job (e.g. silly ones like you know qualify for every educational discount on technology, etc.) If you can get a 10% effective pay increase plus reasonable relo, and you're ready to make the move *anyway*, that's pretty reasonable. Just don't go in the negative once you figure CoL. IIRC you're in an expensive geography anyway. Since you're moving from overpriced/expensive to overpriced/expensive, it's likely to be a fair deal. If you were moving, for example, from St. Louis and only got a 10% raise, you'd be getting screwed.

I feel like you should price in the uncertainty of moving. Even if you're not happy with where you are now, it's always a risk to move to a different job. You coworkers or manager may turn out to be complete assholes, you may have to make sacrifices in terms of living situation or benefits, you may end up responsible for something that you absolutely detest, etc. You may be discontented where you are and jumping ship is a perfectly acceptable way to deal with the situation, but I'd make sure you're getting a raise. 10% is reasonable but only you can pick your number.

++ on what Nevarre said. Bay area means that you will have a significant commute to and from work. You may have one now and its no big deal, but many people don't realize how expensive housing is in the Bay Area and how far you have to go to find reasonable housing.

Negotiate higher. They threw out a number. Typically a company will lowball you. Emphasize your interest, and tell them you were thinking more along the lines of (current +30-35%) and ask what they can do.

Negotiate higher. They threw out a number. Typically a company will lowball you. Emphasize your interest, and tell them you were thinking more along the lines of (current +30-35%) and ask what they can do.

If it's really .edu, you can certainly try to counter but the salary rules will often be quite rigid. They may want to pay more, but can't within a given set of classification guidelines (for example) and to reclassify the job would require throwing out all the candidates and re-posting the job. There may be some wiggle room, and some desire to pay a commensurate salary, but I have to say +30-35% is somewhere between unlikely and risky to ask for.

Not that I've had to do that before...

Something else to consider with a relo-- if you're not just getting a lump sum, you need at least two trips: One to hunt for housing (paid on company dime with airfare, housing and probably a decent per diem) and a second for the actual move (including mover expenses.)

SF can be surprisingly expensive, and it definitely is expensive, but it's not comparable to NYC. You're going to be taking a basket of apples, a bushel of oranges, and try to line them up. Even so, absolutely everything is expensive in New York while SF is less consistent.

Housing is indeed expensive, but you get more square feet. There's a big gradient in prices. It's not like Jersey house->Boro apartment->Manhattan closet.

Commuting and mode of commute are imporant considerations in quality of lie, but so is the weather, the immediate scenery, and the nearby scenery. You probably don't have a car here. You'll probably have a car there.

Something else to consider with a relo-- if you're not just getting a lump sum, you need at least two trips: One to hunt for housing (paid on company dime with airfare, housing and probably a decent per diem) and a second for the actual move (including mover expenses.)

This. When I relo'd to Boston for my promotion back in 98, the company flew me out for two weeks and put me up in an extended stay. My entire time I maybe went into the office to do actual work 2-3 days...the rest of the time I was house/apartment hunting. I then flew back to CO and I got three quotes for movers, and the company honored the middle quote, which including trailering my car from CO to MA. They then flew the wife and I out there (we shipped our short-term stuff out the day we left to our new apartment, and beat it there). When the movers got there, we knew they were going to expect cash, so I made sure the company gave me check with enough runway to get it cleared and cashed at a local bank. I actually came out about $700 ahead...which was nice.

Pro-tip...if you do decide to make a cross country move like this...throw out/sell as much of your shit as you can. You'll thank me later.

as I said, did you live in the city itself, or somewhere else? Food. Transit. General taxes. Everything is expensive in New York. Big difference. The only thing that's not expensive in New York is the stuff you can order off Amazon.

Negotiate higher. They threw out a number. Typically a company will lowball you. Emphasize your interest, and tell them you were thinking more along the lines of (current +30-35%) and ask what they can do.

If it's really .edu, you can certainly try to counter but the salary rules will often be quite rigid. They may want to pay more, but can't within a given set of classification guidelines (for example) and to reclassify the job would require throwing out all the candidates and re-posting the job. There may be some wiggle room, and some desire to pay a commensurate salary, but I have to say +30-35% is somewhere between unlikely and risky to ask for.

The OP mentioned that the position was advertised with up to 42% above his current, which implies that they are at least able to pay that much. Even though it's an .edu and salary rules are more rigid, I assume they wouldn't advertise a salary they couldn't pay. I could be wrong, of course. And whether they're willing to pay the OP that much is another thing entirely.

I'm not saying that they don't have the ability to be generous with salary, but HR might be going down a tickbox looking for info to tightly classify the pay scale.

They might also have to advertise the range offered for a given titled position. They may not have a plan to pay somebody at the top of the range. The ranges can be quite broad, given that .edu is a weird mix of flexibility and rules.

You can certainly *ask* but be aware that the same *kind* of hardball that might work where you are now might need to be crafted a little more carefully.

FYI, the .edu space can be a soul sucking place to work where the good people move in and out and only the ones who can't get a job elsewhere stay. At least that was my experience at a .edu.

Or it can be the opposite: You'll work with lifers who are stupidly brilliant, realize they could never do work as *fun* in the private sector, but don't have a shred of common sense

If you're on staff (not faulty) advancement can be tricky as sometimes you'll compete with people who are way more educated than they "ought" to be for the position (e.g. people with PhDs applying to jobs that maybe require a BA) just because they like the concept of academia. It's a mix-- and you need some people there who have a head for business on their shoulders.

I've considered working in .edu IT for the tuition break that many universities gives employees (want to get my MBA/masters in engineering/cs). What are people thoughts on working on such a switch?

Many .edu establishments I have talked to require that you have been working for them for at least 1 year before the free classes kick in. If you are going to do it for the free classes You definitely want to compare .edu compensation against commercial compensation plus the $5k annual education allowance to make sure you aren't taking to large of a real hit to the pocketbook that could easily cover those same classes in chasing the free class benefit. Also, as mentioned, .edu tends to be pretty much locked in when it comes to compensation so negotiating tends to be much more difficult and raises are on schedules not tied to cost of living.

That being said, once I've built my nest egg I am not opposed to going to work for a .edu as long as it's a reputable school in a place I want to be. They tend to be much more relaxed about cutting out to go take classes in the middle of the day and have an excellent vacation schedule I hear.

I worked for a company that would pay for classes that would loosely benefit the company. If you make decent money, I would think it's a better strategy to make the most money you possibly can and use it to pay for the education. It's not like .edu is on a hiring spree.

1. Make sure they (one way or another) pay for relo. Coast to cost relo costs.

2. Find out if there is any clawback in the relo costs. It's getting to be a rarer benefit and it often comes with strings attached, like staying on for two years. You don't want to find yourself working for two years at a job you hate to "work off" what amounts to a 20K relocation "loan/clawback" or even the threat of it. I've been there and it's hell on earth.

The advise to throw out a huge amount of your stuff is excellent.

Even take a week off of work between jobs to do it.

I went from MN to NY, managed to get the employer to "eat" the relocation they gave me when we parted ways, and then faced my own bill of 17K to move yet again. I did not take time off to downsize and, looking back, I regret the extra expense. It would have paid for me to push back the start date and take the extra time to ditch stuff.

There's enough uncertainty here that you need to make sure the relocation part of it isn't a big factor. My wife swears we will never move again and I think she's right.

I will probbly end up declining this. They won't go above 10% actual increas in salary, and raises and bonuses seem to little and far inbetween. too bad, for 20% (maybe even 15%) I would have strongly considered this position.

Typically indicates they don't specifically want person X, rather, they want "anyone who fits the role". I vastly prefer working somewhere that values not just my abilities, but me as an individual contributor as well, and so personally I don't feel like you will be missing out.

Typically indicates they don't specifically want person X, rather, they want "anyone who fits the role". I vastly prefer working somewhere that values not just my abilities, but me as an individual contributor as well, and so personally I don't feel like you will be missing out.

If they really wanted another person, why bother making a reasonably competitive offer in the first place, though?

Typically indicates they don't specifically want person X, rather, they want "anyone who fits the role". I vastly prefer working somewhere that values not just my abilities, but me as an individual contributor as well, and so personally I don't feel like you will be missing out.

If they really wanted another person, why bother making a reasonably competitive offer in the first place, though?

It's not that they want another person, and I didn't say that. I said the issue is that they want anyone who fits the role. As in not you specifically. Just what I've experienced myself (and read here on Ars) in other cases where hiring won't budge on numbers.

Pro-tip...if you do decide to make a cross country move like this...throw out/sell as much of your shit as you can. You'll thank me later.

I think you got that backwards. Sell as much of your shit as you can, then throw out the rest. Significantly harder to make a slae the other way around.

Quote:

Typically indicates they don't specifically want person X, rather, they want "anyone who fits the role". I vastly prefer working somewhere that values not just my abilities, but me as an individual contributor as well, and so personally I don't feel like you will be missing out.

Lots of big companies have fairly strict salary bands that just aren't easy or impossible to break with offers. It doesn't mean anything more than lot of companies are stupid and let policy dictate their decision maing more than common sense.

To the OP, I think I would have done the same thing. Moving clear across the country is a big deal, and I think I would need a pretty significant incentive to take on that level of change in my life.

good on ya. I'm not sure bout the cost-of-living differences between where you're at and SFO, but SFO is widely accepted as being one of the highest COLA areas in the US. a 10% raise would have been a net loss for relocating there if you're in an area where the COLA is vastly lower.

And when I negotiated for my salary, I had two numbers in mind. 1)my dream number, and 2)my minimum number. I ended up with a salary that was halfway between the two, and that made me happy.